Nearby Paté Chaud and Distant Mushroom Clouds

As published at SubStack, 5/1/22:

[Vung Tau, 5/1/22]

Before leaving Namibia, I was trying to get a German friend to join me there. Locked out of cafes and restaurants, his life was miserable, and he had just been disqualified from a much better job when his potential boss discovered he hadn’t been Jewjabbed. With enough cash, my friend could relax for months in a much less toxic nation. Two days before his arrival, though, he changed his mind. Since it’s a huge step to remove oneself from the familiar, many will be nuked or starved to death right at home, or herded into concentration camps by those who look and talk just like them! It’s more comforting that way.

I’m in my native country, but in a rather unfamiliar city. Though I’ve known Vung Tau since childhood, I’ve spent just three months here altogether. My willingness to walk everywhere and listen to everyone does go a long way to get me settled, though.

While eating duck embryos on the sidewalk, I was told by a middle aged man at the next table how terrible Vung Tau hospitals are, for his own mother was wrongly diagnosed with having an appendix, and an acquaintance had her left lung operated on, when there was too much fluids in her right one. It’s worth it to travel all the way to Saigon for medical treatments, he claimed. Why, the best Saigon hospital does not even have a morgue, he swore, for no patient has ever died there.

If anything goes wrong, I should just lie still in my air conditioned room and ride it out. As long as I don’t rot for too long before being sniffed out, I won’t feel too guilty. Sorry, lady.

Soon after dawn, I walk about a mile to my favorite cafe, Ca Dao, whose name means “folk poetry.” I tend to take a circuitous route, often through alleys, because, well, the unknown or unexpected is stimulating. Maybe that’s why the prospects of mushroom clouds on the horizon are turning some people on. For perhaps a week, nuclear war will surely beat Netflix.

In Tokyo, a friend told me most Japanese are so punctual and orderly, they stand at the same spot in the same subway car, at the same time each morning. Vietnamese aren’t like that.

In an alley, Ca Dao is almost never visited by a foreigner. Sometimes, though, a Scottish man would show up. Here for several years, he can speak some Vietnamese. You can be in a foreign country for several lifetimes and never become convincingly acculturated. How you hunch over or lean back can give you away.

Still, many come to Vung Tau and stay, because, like I said, it’s paradisal enough for anyone. I met an 82-year-old American who’s been here for two years, after 65 in his native Salem, Oregon, then 15 in Thailand. Pacified by age, thus indifferent to booze and boobs, Bob just wants to left alone in a pleasant setting, to glide, hopefully not too painfully, towards eternity.

At Ca Dao, I can sit inside under an air conditioner to cool off, or outside to type without musical distractions, though the song selection here is always exceptional. Most of the Vietnamese ones are from wartime South Vietnam, a period of astounding creativity, with lyricists like Trịnh Công Sơn and Phạm Duy at the peak of their poetic power. The grief and terror of that era is well recorded, but also its vitality and love of life. As for songs in English, here you can hear Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash, etc.

[my writing station at Ca Dao, 4/16/22]

“It’s interesting how Johnny Cash has such an appeal worldwide,” I said to Ca Dao’s owner, Cao Hùng Lynh. “He comes off as an outlaw, but a sappy outlaw!” I laughed. “A real outlaw wouldn’t sing about crying. ‘When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry.’”

“That’s why he’s an artist!”

Hùng Lynh’s daughter studied in Singapore, so he visited her there a few times, but otherwise has not traveled. A photographer, Hùng Lynh particularly admires Bruce Gilden, you know, the one who startles strangers on the streets of New York with his flash.

Loving American music from at least half a century ago, Hùng Lynh agrees with me America’s cultural rot is well advanced. It’s too obvious.

“The US used to have mature female singers,” I said. “You know, women who could sing about growing old.” As an example, I pulled up on YouTube Alberta Hunter’s “You Can’t Tell the Difference After Dark.” Born in 1895, Hunter wrote this at age 40, but recorded her most memorable version of it when she was 85!

Look at what the sun has done to me.

It seems there’s no more fun for me.

Lots of these fellows act so shy,

And I think I know the reason why.

I may be as brown as a berry.

Hah, but that’s only secondary.

You can’t tell the difference after dark!

I may not be so appealing,

I may look like Ma Rainey,

Oh, but I’ve got that certain feeling,

And you can’t tell the difference after dark!

They say gentlemen prefer blonde haired ladies,

But you’ve got to be out of your mind

To think I’m out of style,

Just because I’m slightly shady!

[…]

Yes, it’s about race, but the “no more fun” means it’s also about aging, and, more broadly, all the limitations of having a body that, even at its peak, is variously handicapped. What makes this version so life affirming is the joyful defiance of Hunter’s old, raspy voice belting out verbal lust.

Hearing this, Hùng Lynh pointed out, “Us Vietnamese have a saying, ‘Turn the light off, a tiled roof is the same as a thatched roof!’”

Unlike most Vietnamese, Hùng Lynh has stayed clear of the Jewjab. We’ve talked about the evil effects Covid hysteria has had on small children. They grow up fearing other people and the air itself.

During Covid, I’ve been lucky enough to always be in places where life was more or less normal, so, again, I’m in a Vung Tau that’s its usual teeming self, despite all the mask wearing. With my travel sketches, then, I bring you normalcy. It’s nice just to sit at a table with something good to eat or drink, with many people walking by, so even overheard trivia is soothing.

One country over, millions have been locked up in Shanghai and, it appears, millions more in Beijing will suffer the same fate. Perhaps China’s baffling behavior is its way of preventing goods from reaching the US, a disguised embargo? Starved of more critical components, the collapse of the American economy will only accelerate.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine will only escalate and spread, since Washington shows no interest in negotiating with Putin, not that the leering moron babbling in cartoonese is capable of negotiating anything with anybody. The US has become the biggest Jewish joke ever.

Six months ago, a reader, Wanda, left a curious comment at my blog:

I have friends and relatives in the ONI, NSA and, yes, the CIA, and they all tell me they expect global thermonuclear war within five years at the latest, so maybe none of this [Covid hysteria] matters. They could be wrong, of course. I hope so. But in the meantime, just enjoy life for however long it may last.

[…]

There's no point in obsessing over things we have no control over. So take a nice walk, have a good meal, drink a good beer and sleep well!

Very fatalistic, this Wanda, but perhaps she had no choice, since she admitted to having been Jewjabbed. She’s right, though, in saying that us plebeians have no control over our collective fate or the destiny of our planet, and I’m sorry if that sounds so defeatist.

What we do have some control over is the salvation of our own ass, that is, we’ve been cornered into thinking like refugees. To reach safety, we must be decisive and let go of just about everything. If forced to, we must be prepared to survive, even for years, with everything on our back, though, I admit, it’s a bit silly to speak in years now.

This morning, I bought an excellent paté chaud at a newly discovered bakery. For dinner, I sat next to a Christmas tree, such is the weirdness of Vietnam. Tomorrow, I will have another nourishing conversation at Ca Dao, I hope.

 

[Vung Tau, 4/29/22]